While Twitter is reputedly growing at 700% per annum and hitting the headlines, it’s sometimes easy to get carried away with it’s significance. Obviously, if you’re a daily Twitterer who’s plugged in to several active networks and using TweetDeck (or a similar tool) as your primary source of news – it seems like anyone who is anyone is using Twitter. But really, are they?
The fact is, the Twitter user-base is still a tenth of the size of Facebook and the majority of users remain casual (if not dormant) Twitterers who’ve posted more Tweets than they have followers. Granted, if you’re in the media, marketing or PR, you’ll find millions of active users to follow and engage with, but what about those of us who work in more publicity shy, less showy industries and business sectors?
If, for example, you’re an Insurance Lawyer you’ll have a choice of 25 people to follow. That’s pretty lame as far as global communities go, but it’s a veritable thronging crowd compared to the connections available Bond Brokers. If you want to discuss the complex business of buying and selling bonds, you can choose to talk to David from Chicago or Jeffrey from Georgia. Good luck with that one.
Creative industries seem to be disproportionately well represented on Twitter. A quick search for “sculptors” produces 676 results and over 9,000 people have the word “printer” (or print) in their profiles. Evidently this (relatively) new medium offers fresh ground for innovators and explorers of ideas. As Copyblogger points out, highly creative people generally “have the courage to try new things and risk failure. Every big breakthrough starts as a harebrained idea.” And, rightly or wrongly, Twitter still falls into the “hair-brained idea” category for majority of business people.
Clearly, some perspective is needed here. One the one hand, many (probably most) industries are yet to populate the Twittersphere, but if the current growth of the service is maintained, that’s likely to happen in the next couple of years. On the other hand, there’s already huge value in finding and engaging with the press and media types in your industry, who you’re likely to find on Twitter today (in fact there are several lists to help you). How else can you share snippets of news with influential journalists throughout the day without triggering a string of restraining orders?
In spite of my reservations, I still advise all of my clients to start using Twitter, simply so they understand social media at its most viral and get a feel for how communications are likely to develop. Anyone who thinks Twitter is not a business tool is hugely mistaken and likely to pay a heavy price within the next 2-3 years. Expect “meme” news and communication services to proliferate in the shadow of this little bird.
Hi there
Interesting post. I do agree that certain industries have a huge amount of tweeters whilst others have a lot less. For me, I think that is similar to thinking about how an audience may size for a more niche topic, compared to a wider, more consumer focus.
I also agree that many still are growing their knowledge of how Twitter can be used for business, especially for more mainstream businesses such as accountancy/ law, or compared to smaller businesses where you have one person who doesn’t need to go through sign off processes to define how social media can be used.
Warmly
Claire
[...] Who Really Uses Twitter? [...]
Thanks Clare – Yes there’s a certain inevitability about smaller Twitter audiences for niche industries. I guess I was just countering my own desire to evangelise Twitter with some plain old level-headed reason.